Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 89 November 5, 1992 1) Hersh Raseyner (Zachary Baker) 2) Bloyz (Ellen Prince) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tuesday, November 3, 1992 From: Zachary Baker (bm.yib@rlg.bitnet) Subject: Story: "Mayn krig mit Hersh Raseyner" In MENDELE vol. 2 no. 86 Leonard Prager requests the source for the original Yiddish version of Chaim Grade's story "Mayn krig mit Hersh Raseyner." The answer is that it first appeared in the journal [Y]IDISHER KEMFER, vol. 32, no. 923 (Rosh Hashanah issue, Sept. 28, 1951), pp. 33-44. It was reprinted in 1969, in a thin volume containing Grade's classic poem "Musernikes" and the story "Mayn krig [etc.]" (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Yiddish Language and Literature). An English translation of the story was published in Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg's anthology A TREASURY OF YIDDISH STORIES (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), pp. 579-606. The story was made into the film "The Quarrel," which is currently showing, for a two-week run (this week and next) at New York's Film Forum, on Houston Street. The film, which is set in Montreal (the story was set in Paris), is a Canadian production and it may be shown on U.S. public television. Reports are that it is a kind of Jewish "My Dinner With Andre'." (I intend to see it later this week.) Secondly, I must correct an erroneous impression conveyed by Ellen Prince, regarding the purported interpolation of Max Weinreich's reflections on the impact of the "Hitler-khurbm" on Yiddish (she writes: "That's remarkable... SO remarkable in fact that I'd wonder if it wasn't added later"). The issue of YIVO- BLETER in which Weinreich's remarks appeared was the January- February 1941 issue; in those days, the journal was published promptly on a bimonthly basis (let's leave aside Prof. Prince's dismissive comment, "It's not that unusual for YIVO to be a few years behind in publication, even in peacetime!"). If Weinreich interpolated that observation at a later date (which I seriously doubt), it could have come no later than late February or early March of 1941. Incidentally, I have in my files (not handy, but retrievable) a photocopy of an undated interview with the historian Simon Dubnow, which must have been conducted in 1940. (The interview was with a visiting Yiddish journalist, A. M. Kayzer, and it appeared in a Lithuanian or Latvian Yiddish newspaper. The original clipping was found in the Elias Tcherikower archives at YIVO.) To the best of my recollection, Dubnow also used the word "khurbm" to characterize what was occurring in Poland under the Nazi occupation. (Remember: He was living in Riga, which was still nominally independent, although it would be annexed to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940, and become the capital of the Latvian S.S.R.) But he continued, along these lines: There will still be a "Jewish problem" in Eastern Europe after this is all over. There will still be two million Jews in Poland. (He presumably had in mind the Generalgouvernement and western territories annexed by Germany.) They will be reduced to abject poverty by the war; what will come afterwards? To return to Weinreich: practically in the same breath that he referred to the "Hitler-khurbm" he spoke of his hopes for the postwar years: "...we are obligated to preserve the property which we possess [i.e., Yiddish] for the Europe of tomorrow, when the ghetto walls will collapse and bury underneath them those who erected them" ("Di yidishe visnshaft in der hayntiker tsayt," fun M. Vaynraykh [Weinreich], in YIVO-BLETER, vol. 17, no. 1 (Jan.- Feb. 1941), p. 7.) "Khurbm," in Dubnow's mind as of 1940, and -- I posit -- in Weinreich's mind at the beginning of 1941, probably meant the ghettoization, hunger, impoverishment, and terrorization (with sporadic mass murders) of Eastern European Jewry. The term naturally became understood to encompass much more, as events unfolded. Zachary Baker 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 03 Nov 92 14:16:20 EST From: "Ellen F. Prince" Subject: RE: bloyz (Joe Frisch writes:) >The example that was given: bloyz ikh bin foyl >ouftsushteyn in german would be: Ich bin bloss zu faul um >aufzustehen or in English it follows: I am just too lazy >to get up. joe, i meant to mark this sentence with a _*_, meaning 'impossible', in contrast to the same sentence with _nor_, which is not only possible but in fact occurred. sorry if i omitted the asterisk or didn't make clear what it meant. ellen prince ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.89 If your message is intended for MENDELE, please write to: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu or mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu If your node is Bitnet-only and is not connected to the Internet, please send your message to: mendele@trincc or mendele@yalevm If you want to discuss personal business or have a shmues with the shames, please write to: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu or nmiller@trincc Please sign your articles.